More and more people are calling for a General Strike, for a way to withdraw our support from a system which seems heedless to the will of the people. Our governmental representatives treat us as if "We the Rabble" are to be ignored. One group, vote strike, is doing incredible and substantive work in calling for a General Strike on 9/11/08, with smaller strikes and economic boycotts between now and then.

This diary will present the thinking and work of vote strike with links for additional information; it will include excerpts from a cogent article by scholar, journalist Garret Keizer. I also recommend that anyone interested in this subject watch the DVD/Video "A Force More Powerful" which presents a brief history of 6 successful non-violent resistance groups; the DVD can help activists in modeling the action. Links provded below.

I urge you to consider this call to a General Strike, the use of non-violent resistance. It is a time-honored technique, possible beginning with "Lysistrata," and effectively used several times in the past one hundred years.

They want to set the world on fire We are in danger There is time only to work slowly There is no time not to love. ---Deena Metzger

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Perhaps the only effective action left to take now in order to stop the gears and levers of this lemming-like perpetual motion machine of destruction is---to do nothing. That's right, nothing. To go on strike.

Nothing else we have done in the past 8 years has had much or any result in accomplishing our goals-- not millions in the streets before the invasion of Iraq, not letters, phone calls, sit ins, petitions, town hall meetings, not electing a Democratic majoriy in 2006. "We the people" have not been, and are not being, heard.

So long as we continue to participate in this system, to go along in our normal routines within this system, we give our consent to the very system which ignores us and denies our rights as citizens. Continuing to go along only dooms us to repeating it over and over again. It's fine to continue working politically; but, and this is a big but, we must do more.

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By continuing to attempt to work with "what has become of" democratic electoral politics only, we will most likely continue to be defeated. Just like the 2006 elections, we anti-in our hopes, only to be disappointed, to find we've been suckered again.

Obviously, we can't go for open revolt. We'll be mowed down so thoroughly and so quickly that it is not an option.

So the only thing I can see to do is to refuse to comply, refuse to go along.

The group vote strike is calling for a massive General Strike to start on September 11, 2008, with smaller strikes earlier and a financial strike (buying only necessities) going on from whatever day you join (now) ongoing to and through September 11.

So many of us are so discouraged from years of activism to seemingly no avail, we need a new direction. In an excellent essay in HARPER'S last fall, Garret Keizer offers some inspiring ideas...

Of all the various depredations of the Bush regime, none has been so thorough as its plundering of hope. Iraq will recover sooner. What was supposed to have been the crux of our foreign policy-a shock-and-awe tutorial on the utter futility of any opposition to the whims of American power-has achieved its greatest and perhaps its only lasting success in the American soul.

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You will want to cite the exceptions, the lunch-hour protests against the war, the dinner party ejaculation of dissent, though you might also want to ask what substantive difference they bear to grousing about the weather or even to raging against the dying of the light -- that is, to any ritualized complaint against forces universally acknowledged as unalterable. Bush is no longer the name of a president so much as the abbreviation of a proverb, something between Murphy's Law and tomorrow's fatal inducement to drink and be merry today.

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike ... for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words "It won't do any good"? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he's going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizen-ry that believes it is already dead.

But we are not dead, and no matter how thoroughly we have been brainwashed into hopelessness by "their" immense, regressive, encompassing power, we're still here and still trying. We must stand against, refusing to accept, such malevolent, immoral power. The horrors are too great, the powers too entrenched and recalcitrant. We simply must say "No" and say "No" now.

Keizer continues later in his article:

The stream of commuters heading into the city, the caravan of tractor-trailers pulling out of the rest stop into the dawn's early light, speak a deep-throated Yes to the sum total of what's going on in our collective life. The poet Richard Wilbur writes of the "ripped mouse" that "cries Concordance" in the talons of the owl; we too cry our daily assent in the grip of the prevailing order- except in those notable instances when, like a donkey or a Buddha, we refuse to budge.

The question we need to ask ourselves at this moment is what further provocations we require to justify digging in our heels. To put the question more pointedly: Are we willing to wait until the next presidential election, or for some interim congressional conversion experience, knowing that if we do wait, hundreds of our sons and daughters will be needlessly destroyed? Another poet, César Vallejo, framed the question like this:

A man shivers with cold, coughs, spits up blood.

Will it ever be fitting to allude to my inner soul? . . . A cripple sleeps with one foot on his shoulder.

Shall I later on talk about Picasso, of all people?

A young man goes to Walter Reed without a face. Shall I make an appointment with my barber? A female prisoner is sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Shall I send a check to the Clinton campaign?

Keizer draws a horrifying picture of any continuing superficial participation or complicity in this, shall I say, charade!

"Sooner or later all freedom loving Americans will realize that the only way to stop those who would bleed our nation dry, dismantle our constitution, and dissolve our national sovereignty is to say I will not work for you, buy from you, fight for you, or die for you, until the criminals are gone from the halls of our government."

Vote Strike recommends doing the following things:

In order to get involved, here are the five best steps to take now:

Sign up with your email address at the URL in order to get updates,

e-alerts@votestrike.com;

Mark the day on your calendar and plan to be at a protest in your community;

Send this URL to all your friends, post it to forums, put it on your personal pages,http://www.votestrike.com There will be zero mainstream media discussion of this General Strike before it happens. So, we must be our own media and promote it. Link to this site from sites and blogs. Mention it with links in your comments on blogs;

Join the Consumer Fast already underway. Click Shut'EmDown at the URL

Take the lead and help organize a protest on 9/11

Backround: Ghandi spoke of the need for a journal/newspaper to get the word out. And in researching for this site, I have learned that all of the quotes we learned in civics class of the founding fathers 'give me freedom or give me death' etc., came from books writen by the founding fathers. I believe that they wrote/blogged so much to inflame the passions of the people. That the general pop was apathetic & complacent. They got up, went to work, paid their taxes, had British soldiers all around & never knew anything different.

So I've started dropping articles at opednews.com- daily. The article that came out today blew up the site, & we got more people signing up today for a single day than any other day....Ghandi was right.

My request to you is: blow these articles up. Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc. I only have time to publish at Opednews.com/Newsvine so I need you to post them at BuzzFlash, Anti-war.com, (your favorite site) etc. This is easy, free & only takes a minute. (Article titles, links & descriptions appear at vote strike link listed above.)

We only have a couple more months until Sept. 11th & this is one of the best ways to spread the word about the strike. Some of these articles are only one page long & would make great flyers, posters, emails, faxes, etc.

I will conclude with Garret Keizer again. His article, ."Specific Suggestion: General Strike", appeared in Harper's "Notebook", October 2007, pg.9.

I wrote this appeal during the days leading up to the Fourth of July. I wrote it because for the past six and a half years I have heard the people I love best-family members, friends, former students and parishioners-saying, "I'm sick over what's happening to our country, but I just don't know what to do." Might I be pardoned if, fearing civil disorder less than I fear civil despair, I said, "Well, we could do this." It has been done before and we could do this. And I do believe we could. If anyone has a better idea, I'm keen to hear it. Only don't tell me what some presidential hopeful ought to do someday. Tell me what the people who have nearly lost their hope can do right now.

Whether you call it the world financial structure, the U.S. culture of waste, or the ability of the common man to make a decent living, the system is broken. It's time for the common man to go on strike. Join or support the March on Washingon (more...)